UC-NRLF 


LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

GIFT    OF 


1 

Class 


CANON  FAKKAR. 


New  York 

H.  M.  Caldwell   Co 

Publishers 


Copyright, 
BY  H.  M    CALDWELL  Co. 


WHAT    HEAVEN    IS. 

"  Let  us  labour  therefore  to  enter  into  that  rest."  —  HKB.  iv.,  n. 

IN  one  of  our  ablest  Reviews,  a  discussion  has 
been  going  on  for  some  time  on  the  soul  and 
future  life ;  and  it  is  a  sign  of  the  large  toleration 
of  the  times  tnat  some  of  the  writers  not  only 
glory  in  expressing  a  belief  that,  apart  from  his 
body,  man  has  no  soul,  and  no  life  beyond  the 
grave  —  an  opinion,  the  open  expression  of  which 
would,  twenty  years  ago,  have  been  received  with 
outbursts  of  indignation ;  but  have  even  arrived 
at  the  point  of  treating  with  compassionate  dis- 
dain those  who  still  cling  to  the  traditional  belief. 
Now  I  do  not  think  it  needful,  brethren,  in  this 
nineteenth  century  after  Christ,  to  argue  with  you 
that  you  have  souls,  and  that  your  life  is  not  as 
the  life  of  the  beasts  that  perish.  To  the  end  of 
time  the  human  race  will  believe  this,  though 
from  the  dawn  of  History  there  have  been  a  few 
philosophers  who  disputed  it.  Securus  judicat 
orbis  terrarum.  These  speculations  have  never 


J08552 


2  WHAT    HEAVEN    IS. 

shaken,  will  never  shake,  the  fixed  convictions  of 
mankind.  Those  convictions  might  have  been 
expressed  from  very  early  ages  in  the  simple 
verse  of  the  poet : 

"  Life  is  real,  life  is  earnest, 

And  the  grave  is  not  its  goal  j 
'  Dust  thou  art,  to  dust  returnest,' 
Was  not  spoken  of  the  soul." 

We  may  freely  concede  that,  of  the  separate 
existence  of  the  immaterial  soul,  and  our  survival 
beyond  "the  intolerable  indignities  of  dust  to 
dust,"  we  have  no  mathematical  demonstration 
to  offer.  But  this  fact  does  not  in  the  slightest 
degree  trouble  us,  because  neither  is  there  any 
such  proof  of  the  existence  of  a  God.  It  is  per- 
fectly easy  for  a  man  to  say,  if  he  will,  "  I  do  not 
believe  in  a  God.'  I  do  not  care  to  offer  up  any 
worship,  even  of  the  silent  sort,  even  at  the  altar 
of  "the  unknown  and  the  unknowable."  I  do 
not  even  think  it  worth  while  to  pray  that  wild 
prayer  once  uttered  by  a  criminal  upon  the  scaf- 
fold :  "  O  God,  if  there  be  a  God,  save  my  soul, 
if  I  have  a  soul."  A  man  may  say  all  this,  and 
plume  himself  on  this  melancholy  abnegation  of 
man's  fairest  hopes  ;  on  this  deliberate  suicide 
of  the  spiritual  faculty  ;  and  if  he  considers  such 


WHAT    HEAVEN    IS.  3 

opinions  to  be  a  sign  of  intellectual  emancipa- 
tion, we  can  offer  to  him  no  proof  that  will 
necessarily  convince  him.  When  Vanini  lay  in 
prison  on  a  charge  of  atheism,  he  touched  with 
his  foot  a  straw  which  lay  on  his  dungeon-floor, 
and  said,  "  that  from  that  straw  he  could  prove 
the  existence  of  God.  We  can  pluck  the  mean- 
est flower  of  the  hedgerow,  and  point  to  the 
exquisite  perfection  of  its  structure,  the  tender 
delicacy  of  its  loveliness ;  we  may  pick  up  the 
tiniest  shell  out  of  myriads  upon  the  shore,  so 
delicate  that  a  touch  would  crush  it,  and  yet  a 
miracle  of  rose  and  pearl,  of  lustrous  iridescence 
and  fairy  arabesque,  and  ask  the  atheist  if  he 
feels  seriously  certain  that  these  things  are  but 
the  accidental  outcome  of  self-evolving  laws.  We 
can  take  him  under  the  canopy  of  night,  and 
show  him  the  stars  of  heaven,  and  ask  him 
whether  he  really  holds  them  to  be  nothing  more 
than  "  shining  illusions  of  the  night,  eternal 
images  of  deception  in  an  imaginary  heaven, 
golden  lies  in  dark  blue  nothingness."  Or  we  may 
bid  him  watch  with  us  the  flow  of  the  vast  stream 
of  history,  and  see  how  the  great  laws  of  it  are  as 
mighty  currents  "  that  make  for  righteousness." 
Or  we  may  appeal  to  the  inner  voices  of  his 


4  WHAT    HEAVEN    IS. 

being,  and  ask  whether  they  have  indeed  no 
message  to  tell  him.  But  if  he  deny  or  reject 
such  arguments  as  these ;  if  he  treat  with  arro- 
gant scorn  that  evidence  of  the  things  unseen 
which  has  been  enough  in  all  ages  for  the 
millions  of  humanity  —  which  was  enough  in 
past  times  for  Dante  and  Shakespeare,  and  Mil- 
ton and  Newton  —  which  was  enough  till  yester- 
day for  Brewster,  and  Whewell,  and  Herschel, 
and  Faraday;  if  he  demand  a  kind  of  proof 
which  is  impossible,  and  which  God  has  withheld, 
seeing  that  it  is  a  law  that  spiritual  things  can 
only  be  spiritually  discerned,  and  that  we  walk  by 
faith  and  not  by  sight;  if,  in  short,  a  man  will 
not  see  God  because  clouds  and  darkness  are 
round  about  Him,  although  righteousness  and 
judgment  are  the  habitation  of  His  seat,  then 
we  can  do  no  more.  He  must  believe  or  not 
believe  —  he  must  bear  or  must  forbear,  as  seems 
him  best.  We  cannot  argue  about  colour  to  the 
blind.  We  cannot  prove  the  glory  of  music  to 
the  deaf.  If  a  man  shuts  his  eyes  hard,  we  can- 
not make  him  see  the  sun.  "  That  the  blush  of 
morning  is  fair,  and  the  quietude  of  grief  is 
sacred,  that  the  heroism  of  conscience  is  noble, 
who  will  undertake  to  prove  to  one  who  does  not 


WHAT    HEAVEN    IS.  5 

see  it  ?  So  wisdom,  beauty,  holiness,  are  im- 
measurable things,  appreciable  by  pure  percep- 
tion, but  which  no  rule  can  gauge,  no  argument 
demonstrate."  My  brethren,  if  you  know  God, 
or  rather  are  known  of  Him,  you  will  need  no 
proof  that  He  is,  and  that  He  is  the  rewarder  of 
them  that  diligently  seek  Him ;  and  you  will  not 
be  much  troubled  by  the  scepticism  of  philoso- 
phers. Oh,  let  us  get  near  to  God  by  faith  and 
prayer,  and  we  shall  break  with  one  of  our  fingers 
through  the  brain-spun  meshes  of  these  impotent 
negations.  Prove  to  us  that  by  the  word  "  God  " 
we  ought  only  to  mean  "  vortices  of  atoms,"  or 
"  streams  of  tendency,"  and  at  the  end  of  such 
triumphant  demonstrations  we  shall  but  kneel 
down  before  Him  who  made  us,  and  not  we  our- 
selves, and  with  bowed  head,  and  sad  yet  kind- 
ling heart,  shall  pray,  if  possible,  with  yet  deeper 
conviction,  "  Our  Father  which  art  in  Heaven." 
And  when  we  thus  believe  in  Him  whom  we 
have  not  seen,  all  else  follows.  We  believe  that 
He  did  not  befool  with  irresistible  longings, 
that  He  did  not  deceive  with  imaginary  hopes, 
the  man  whom  He  had  made.  We  believe  that 
the  breath  of  life  which  came  from  Him  shall  not 
pass  away.  We  believe  that  He  sent  His  Son  to 


6  WHAT    HEAVEN    IS. 

die  for  us  and  to  save  us.  We  believe  that  be- 
cause He  lives  we  shall  live  also.  We  believe ; 
we  are  content ;  we  do  not  even  ask  for  further 
proof.  In  this  belief,  which  we  believe  that  He 
inspireth,  we  shall  console  ourselves  amid  all  the 
emptiness  and  sorrow  of  life ;  we  shall  advance, 
calm  and  happy,  to  the  very  grave  and  gate  of 
death. 

2.  I  speak  to  Christians  ;  to  Christians  who 
hope  not  only  to  live,  but  to  live  in  Heaven  here- 
after; and  I  want  this  morning  to  fix  your  con- 
templation upon  that  Heaven,  and  to  ask  what 
are  our  thoughts  of  it,  and  why.  And  I  do  this 
partly  because  one  of  the  ablest  and  most  elo- 
quent of  the  writers  to  whom  I  have  alluded  has 
spoken  with  passionate  scorn  of  what  he  supposes 
to  be  our  anticipations  of  Heaven,  and  of  what  he 
is  pleased  to  represent  as  the  necessary  result  of 
such  anticipations.  He  says  that  we  are  looking 
for  a  "  vacuous  eternity  ;  "  "a  future  of  ceaseless 
psalmody,"  "  an  eternity  of  the  tabour,"  "  so  gross, 
so  sensual,  so  indolent,  so  selfish,"  that  the  belief 
in  it  "  paralyses  practical  life,  and  throws  it  into 
discord."  "  A  life  of  vanity  in  a  vale  of  tears, 
followed  by  an  infinity  of  celestial  rapture,"  is, 
he  says,  "  necessarily  a  life  of  infinitesimal  im- 


WHAT    HEAVEN    IS.  / 

portance,"  making  men  "  dull  to  the  moral  respon- 
sibility which,  in  its  awfulness,  begins  only  at  the 
grave,"  and  "  little  influenced  by  the  futurity  which 
will  judge  them."  "  And  why,"  he  asks,  "  should 
this  great  end,  staring  at  all  of  us  along  the  vista 
of  each  human  life,  be  forever  a  matter  of  dithy- 
'  rambic  hypotheses  and  evasive  tropes  ?  " 

Now  I  shall  offer  you  no  "  dithyrambic  hy- 
potheses," or  "  evasive  tropes,"  but,  eloquent  as 
all  this  is,  I  am  sure  that  the  most  thoughtful  of 
you  must  have  listened  to  it  with  amused  be- 
wilderment. It  must  have  been  just  a  little 
incongruous  and  unreal  to  you  to  hear  the 
Christian's  hope  of  heaven  described  as  though 
it  were  some  Mohammedan  paradise, —  as  being 
not  only  gross,  selfish,  and  sensual,  but  also  as 
paralysing  and  immoral, —  when  you  know  what 
iives  it  has  influenced,  what  deeds  it  has  inspired. 
Were  the  hopes  of  St.  Stephen,  think  you,  dull 
and  immoral,  when,  with  face  radiant  as  the  face 
of  an  angel,  he  gazed  into  the  opening  heavens  ? 
Was  it  a  dull  selfishness  which  inspired  the  mar- 
tyrs as  they  bathed  their  hands  in  the  torturing 
flame,  or  which  nerved  the  Christian  maiden  as 
she  knelt  awaiting  with  a  smile  the  tiger's  spring  ? 
Was  it  a  paralysing  superstition  which  fills  with 


8  WHAT    HEAVEN    IS. 

"  tempestuous  glory  "  the  sufferings  of  the  good  ; 
which  breathed  through  the  calm  last  words  of 
Richard  Hooker;  which  made  Addison  tell  the 
young  Earl  of  Warwick  to  see  how  a  Christian 
could  die  ;  which  inspired  the  eager  "  Lord,  open 
to  me,  open  to  me,"  of  the  dying  Lacordaire ;  or 
which  has  enabled  so  many  thousands  of  Chris- 
tians, in  every  age  and  every  country,  to  become 
lovelier  in  spirit  during  each  hour  of  life's  wan- 
ing lustre,  showing  ever  "  a  sublimer  faith,  a 
brighter  hope,  a  kinder  sympathy,  a  gentler  res- 
ignation ? "  Ah,  no  !  my  brethren,  "  the  rattling 
tongue  of  saucy  and  audacious  eloquence"  will 
never  persuade  you  of  this ;  and  you  will  only 
listen  with  a  smile  when  you  are  assured  that  the 
hopes  which  uplifted  such  lives,  and  glorified 
such  ends,  were  but  the  confusing  fumes  of  a 
puerile  illusion.  We  know  not  indeed;  but  we 
believe.  We  walk  by  faith,  though  we  cannot 
walk  by  sight.  But  were  the  arguments  of  these 
philosophers  ten  thousand  times  more  cogent 
than  they  are, 

"  What  can  we  do,  o'er  whom  the  unbeholden 

Hangs  in  a  night  wherewith  we  dare  not  cope  ? 
What  but  look  sunward,  and  with  faces  golden 
Speak  to  each  other  softly  of  hope  ?  " 


OF   THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


WHAT    HEAVEN    IS.  9 

It  will  take  many  a  ream  of  agonistic  and  nihil- 
istic literature  to  rob  us  of  the  conviction  with 
which  we  say  :  "  I  believe  in  God  the  Father,  and 
God  the  Son,  and  God  the  Holy  Ghost  ;  I  believe 
in  the  communion  of  saints,  in  the  forgiveness 
of  sins,  the  resurrection  of  the  body,  and  the 
life  everlasting.  Amen." 

3.  Well,  then,  my  brethien,  we  believe  in 
Heaven  ;  but  what  is  Heaven  ?  Our  friends  die 
-  men  die  by  myriads  ;  at  every  ticking  of  the 
clock  some  fifty  souls  have  passed  away  ;  yet 
not  a  breath  of  sound  shakes  the  curtain  of  im- 
penetrable darkness  which  hangs  becween  us  and 
the  unseen  world.  A  fair  child  sighs  away  his 
innocent  soul,  and  in  a  moment,  perhaps, 

"He  hath  learnt  the  secret  hid 
Under  either  pyramid  ;  "  — 

but  to  his  parents,  in  their  agony,  comes  no 
faintest  whisper  from  the  intervital  gloom.  Not 
to  one  of  all  the  unnumbered  generations  whose 
dust  is  blown  upon  the  desert  winds  has  it  been 
permitted  to  breathe  one  syllable  or  letter  of  the 
dim  and  awful  secret  beyond  the  grave.  And 
yet  the  faith  of  man  has  not  been  shaken,  nor  for 
all  this  deep,  unbroken  silence,  has  he  ever  ceased 


IO  WHAT    HEAVEN    IS. 

to  believe  that  He  who  called  us  into  being  will 
bless,  will  save,  will  cherish  the  souls  which  He 
hath  made.  We  feel  sure  He  did  not  mean  us 
merely  "  to  be  born  weeping,  to  live  complaining, 
and  to  die  disappointed,"  and  so  cease  to  be,  but 
that  He  has  a  new  home  for  us  in  other  worlds. 
It  is  the  fact  which  we  believe ;  the  details  are 
not  revealed  to  us.  And  hence  each  race  has 
fancied  its  own  ideal  of  Heaven. 

"  Lo  !  the  poor  Indian,  whose  untutored  mind 
Sees  God  in  clouds,  or  hears  Him  in  the  wind, 
His  soul  proud  science  never  taught  to  stray 
Far  as  the  solar  walk  and  milky  way, 
Yet  simple  nature  to  his  hope  has  given 
Behind  the  cloud-capt  hills  a  humbler  heaven. 

To  be  content  *s  his  natural  desire, 
He  asks  no  angel's  wing,  no  seraph's  fire, 
But  thinks,  admitted  to  that  equal  sky, 
His  faithful  dog  shall  bear  him  company. " 

The  Greek  had  his  Elysian  plains,  where  the 
Eidola  —  the   shadowy   images   of    the    dead —   < 
moved  in  a  world  of  shadows ;  and  his  Islands  of 
the  Blest,  where  Achilles   and  Tydides  unlaced 
the  helmets  from  their  flowing  hair.     The  Scan- 
dinavian dreamed  of  his  green   Paradise  here-j| 
after  amid   the  waste.     Few  indeed   have  been 


WHAT    HEAVEN    IS.  I  I 

the  nations  who  have  not  imagined  that  there 
remains  for  holy  souls  beyond  the  grave  some 

"  Island  valley  of  Avilion, 
Where  falls  not  hail  or  rain,  or  any  snow, 
Nor  ever  wind  blows  loudly." 

And  all  Christians,  that  they  may  be  enabled  to 
give  some  form  to  that  which  cannot  be  uttered, 
have  dwelt  with  rapture  on  the  glowing  symbols 
of  the  poet  of  the  Apocalypse  —  the  New  Jeru- 
salem descending  out  of  Heaven  from  God,  hav- 
ing the  glory  of  God,  and  her  light  like  unto  a 
stone  most  precious,  even  unto  a  jasper  stone; 
and  the  gates  of  pearl,  and  the  foundations  of 
precious  stones,  and  the  pure  river  of  the  water 
of  life,  clear  as  crystal,  and  the  Tree  of  Life, 
with  its  leaves  for  the  healing  of  the  nations. 
Symbols  only,  —  yet  exquisite  symbols  of  the 
poet's  vision,  which  dull  philosophies  may  scorn, 
but  in  which  a  Dante  and  a  Milton  delighted; 
symbols  which  come  back  to  us  with  the  fresh- 
ness and  sweetness  of  childhood,  as  we  sing  the 
hymns,  so  dear  to  Christian  worship,  of  "Jeru- 
salem the  golden,"  or  "  There  is  a  land  of  pure 
delight."  Yet  even  these  symbolic  passages  do 
not  thrill  the  heart  so  keenly  as  others,  which 


12  WHAT    HEAVEN    IS. 

speak  with  scarce  a  symbol,  and  simply  tell  of  a 
life  without  life's  agonies,  and  the  vision  of  God 
undarkened  by  mists  of  sin.  "  They  shall  hunger 
no  more,  neither  thirst  any  more ;  neither  shall 
the  sun  light  on  them,  nor  any  heat.  For  the 
Lamb  that  is  in  the  midst  of  the  throne  shall  feed 
them,  and  shall  lead  them  unto  living  fountains 
of  waters ;  and  God  shall  wipe  away  all  tears 
from  their  eyes."  "And  there  shall  be  no  more 
curse,  but  the  throne  of  God  and  of  the  Lamb 
shall  be  in  it ;  and  His  servants  shall  serve  Him  ; 
and  they  shall  see  His  face,  and  Hi$  name  shall 
be  in  their  foreheads."  And  if  we  need  any 
symbols  to  help  us,  they  are  symbols  of  trans- 
parent meaning :  green  meadows  where  men  may 
breathe  God's  fresh  air,  and  see  His  golden 
light ;  glorified  cities,  with  none  of  the  filth  and 
repulsiveness  of  these,  but  where  no  foul  step 
intrudes ;  white  robes,  pure  emblems  of  stainless 
innocence  ;  the  crown  and  the  palm-branch,  and 
the  throne  of  serene  self-mastery  over  our 
spiritual  enemies ;  and  the  golden  harp  and  the 
endless  song  —  which  do  but  speak  of  abounding 
happiness,  in  that  form  of  it  which  is,  of  all 
others,  the  most  innocent,  the  most  thrilling,  the 
most  intense. 


WHAT    HEAVEN    IS.  13 

4.  To  say  that  there  is  anything  "  dull,  gross, 
selfish,  sensual "  here,  is  surely  an  abuse  of 
words.  But  if  you  cannot  rest  in  these  emblems, 
there  is  yet  a  more  excellent  way.  If  you  still 
sigh: 

"  O  for  a  nearer  insight  into  heaven, 
More  knowledge  of  the  glory  and  the  joy 
Which  there  unto  the  happy  souls  is  given, 
Their  intercourse,  their  worship,  their  employ ; 
For  it  is  past  belief  that  Christ  hath  died 
Only  that  we  unending  psalms  may  sing ; 
That  all  the  gain  Death's  awful  curtains  hide 
In  this  eternity  of  antheming  "  — 

if  you  say  this,  do  not  fear  —  there  are  other 
conceptions  of  Heaven  which  do  not  deal  in 
imagery  at  all.  What  may  be  the  physical  con- 
ditions of  Heaven  we  cannot  tell,  and  perhaps  the 
very  phrase  may  be  meaningless  of  that  place 
where  they  neither  marry  nor  are  given  in  mar- 
riage, but  are  as  the  angels  of  God.  But  so  far 
as  Heaven  is  a  place  at  all,  its  fundamental  con- 
ception is  that  it  is  a  place  where  sin  is  not. 
"Without  are  dogs."  No  guilty  step  may  pass 
the  gates  of  pearl,  no  polluting  presence  fling 
shadows  on  the  golden  streets.  They  who  live 
there  are  the  angels,  and  just  men  made  perfect, 
and  the  spirits  of  the  saints  in  light.  And  if  we 


14  WHAT    HEAVEN    IS. 

ever  get  there,  we  shall  be  as  they ;  for  to  be 
there  is  to  see  the  face  of  God,  and  to  see  the 
face  of  God  is  to  be  changed  into  the  same  image 
from  glory  to  glory.  There  life's  stains  shall 
have  been  purged  away;  and  the  gold  shall  be 
mixed  with  dross  no  longer ;  nor  the  fine  gold 
dim.  There  is  no  slander  there  ;  no  envy,  no 
hatred ;  no  malice ;  no  lies.  There  is  no  mur- 
der there,  nor  wounds,  nor  war.  The  filth  of 
drunkenness  is  not  in  that  city  of  God.  No 
bleared  and  blighted  crowds,  degraded  out  of 
the  semblance  of  humanity,  crawl  like  singed 
moths  round  the  flaring  houses  of  multiplied 
temptations.  There  are  no  hearts  depraved, 
corrupted,  eaten  out  by  lust ;  no  victims  of 
man's  brutal  selfishness,  no  witnesses  of  his  utter 
shame.  Ah,  my  brethren,  which  of  us  all  look- 
ing back  does  not  sigh :  "  I  am  not  all  that  I  might 
have  been ;  I  might  have  been  noble,  and  I  have 
not  been  noble ;  I  might  have  been  kind,  and  I 
have  not  been  kind ;  I  might  have  been  pure, 
and  I  have  not  been  pure  ?  "  Would  you  not 
think  it  almost  a  heaven  if,  without  giving  you 
anything  fresh  at  all,  God  would  but  give  you 
back  what  once  He  gave  ?  If  He  would  but 
restore  to  you  the  sweet  innocent  childhood  He 


WHAT    HEAVEN    IS.  15 

once  bestowed,  that  having  learnt  now  that  sin  is 
anguish,  and  that  good  is  best,  you  might  not 
ravage  the  fair  vineyard  of  your  life,  or  lay  waste 
its  inner  sanctities  ?  Ah,  no  !  perhaps  not,  for  you 
feel  that  you  might  only  fall  again ;  only  be  a 
prodigal  again ;  only  be  weak  and  base  and  vile 
again,  only  despair  again  of  what  you  feel  to  be 
sweetest,  and  barter  for  the  degraded  present  the 
future  immortality.  But,  oh,  to  have  been  disen- 
chanted utterly,  forever,  from  the  low  aims  of 
the  world !  oh,  to  have  been  set  free  forever  from 
the  yoke  of  habit  and  the  power  of  temptation ! 
oh,  to  desire  only,  and  to  do  only  what  is  good, 
without  evil  being  ever  present  to  us !  oh,  to  do 
perfectly,  what  here  we  have  but  imperfectly 
attempted !  oh,  to  be,  what  here  we  have  only 
seemed  to  be  or  wished  to  be  !  oh,  to  be  honest, 
true,  noble,  sincere,  genuine,  pure,  holy  to  the 
heart's  inmost  core !  Is  not  that  Heaven  ?  is  it 
dull,  gross,  sensual,  selfish,  to  sigh  for  that?  Is 
it  not  a  state  rather  than  a  place  ?  is  it  not  a 
temper  rather  than  a  habitation  ?  is  it  not  to  be 
something  rather  than  to  go  somewhere  ?  Yes,  this, 
this  is  heaven.  What  more  we  know  not.  In 
other  stars,  amid  His  countless  worlds,  for  all  we 
know  God  may  have  work  for  us  to  do.  Who 


1 6  WHAT    HEAVEN    IS. 

knows  what  radiant  ministrations ;  what  infinite 
activities;  what  never  ending  progress;  what 
immeasurable  happiness,  what  living  ecstasies  of 
unimaginable  rapture,  where  all  things  are  lovely, 
honourable,  pure  ;  where  there  is  no  moral  ugli- 
ness ;  where  repulsive  squalor,  and  degraded  art, 
and  insane  desire,  and  loathly  vice,  and  pinching 
selfishness,  shall  be  no  more ;  where  boyhood 
shall  not  so  live  as  to  make  its  own  manhood 
miserable ;  where  manhood  shall  not  so  live  as  to 
make  old  age  dishonourable ;  where  old  age  shall 
not  so  live  as  to  make  death  ghastly.  This,  this 
is  heaven  !  And  why  should  we  not  believe  that 
the  God  who  is  so  good  to  us  hath  such  good 
things  in  store  for  all  who  love  Him  ?  All  the 
good  and  true,  all  the  pure  and  noble,  shall  be 
there  : 

"  To  Milton's  trump 
The  high  groves  of  the  renovated  earth 
Unbosom  their  glad  echoes ;  inly  hushed, 
Adoring  Newton  his  serener  eye 
Raises  to  heaven." 

And  all  on  earth  who  have  ever  been  high  and 
sweet  and  worthy,  out  of  every  tribe,  and  kindred, 
and  nation,  and  language,  ten  thousand  times 
ten  thousand,  and  thousands  of  thousands  !  Oh, 


WHAT    HEAVEN    IS.  *7 

if  this  be  a  dull,  gross,  selfish,  sensual  concep- 
tion, give  us  a  greater  and  better  that  we  may 
live  on  it ;  for  we  can  conceive  none  lovelier  than 
this,  and  to  us  this  is  Heaven. 

5.  Let  us  labour,  therefore,  to  enter  into  that 
rest.  For,  my  brethren,  if,  as  we  Christians  be- 
lieve, Christ  hath  died  to  give  us  entrance  into 
such  a  Heaven  as  this,  we  must  believe  the  same 
Gospel  which  tells  us,  not  obscurely,  that  it  is 
not  a  reward  but  a  continuity,  not  a  change  but  a 
development.  To^v?  there  you  must  be  thus.  It 
is  shocking  to  hear  men  and  women  talk  glibly  of 
"  going  to  Heaven,"  whose  whole  lives,  and  well- 
nigh  every  action  of  their  lives, —  whose  daily 
words,  whose  daily  deeds,  whose  very  professions, 
—  are  disgracing  and  embittering  earth.  If  we 
desire  Heaven  we  must  seek  it  here  —  if  we  love 
Heaven  we  must  love  it  now.  And  thou  —  oh, 
mean,  greedy,  avaricious,  money-loving  soul, 
whose  gaze,  even  in  Heaven,  would  be  on  the 
trodden  gold  of  its  pavement ;  and  thou,  base 
usurer  and  defrauder,  who,  hasting  to  be  rich, 
carest  not  how  little  thou  art  innocent,  and  whose 
path  in  life  is  wet  with  orphans'  tears  ;  what  hast 
thou  to  do  with  Heaven  ?  there  are  no  cheatings, 
or  swindlings,  or  hoardings  there ;  and  thou, 


1 8  WHAT    HEAVEN    IS. 

slanderous  whisperer,  whose  soul  is  venomous 
with  hate  and  envy ;  and  thou,  drunkard,  who 
livest  only  to  drown  thy  senses  in  wallowing 
degradation ;  and  thou,  slave  of  thy  lowest  lusts, 
whose  uncleanness  adds  unspeakably  to  the 
~bames  and  miseries  of  earth  ;  and  thou,  selfish 
seducer,  not  afraid 

"  To  pluck  the  rose 

From  the  fair  forehead  of  a  maiden  shame, 

And  set  a  blister  there  ;  " 

and  thou  who  hatest  thy  brother  with  all  but 
murderous  detestation ;  and  thou,  bad  youth, 
whose  soul  is  full  of  fatal  ignorance  and  sensual 
conceit,  and  who  art  drawing  iniquity  with  cords 
of  vanity,  and  sin  as  it  were  with  a  cart-rope ;  and 
all  ye,  children  of  wickedness,  not  slaves  only, 
but  willing  slaves  of  Satan,  who  go  as  the  ox  to 
the  slaughter,  and  as  a  fool  to  the  correction  of 
the  stocks  ;  if  ye  talk  of  Heaven,  what  have  ye  to 
do  with  Heaven  ?  Think  you  that  greed,  and 
malice,  and  intoxication,  and  debauchery  find 
entrance  there  ?  Is  there  not  a  lie  in  your  right 
hands  ?  Think  ye  to  enter  Heaven  thus  in  all 
your  vileness,  meanness,  falsity  ?  Think  ye  that 
the  apples  of  Sodom  and  the  clusters  of  Gomor- 
rah can  grow  in  the  same  soil  with  the  Tree  of 


WHAT    HEAVEN    IS.  1 9 

Life  ?  Oh,  while  you  know  what  you  are,  and 
are  what  you  are,  and  yet  will  not  be  other  than 
what  you  are,  you  would  not  be  happy  if  God 
placed  you  there  to-morrow.  Every  pure  look  of 
it  would  be  a  burning  reproach  to  you ;  every 
rapture  of  it  a  burden,  every  nobleness  a  shame. 
If  you  went  there  with  heart  yet  unchanged,  you 
would  carry  hell  with  you  to  Heaven,  and  would 
make  Heaven  itself  a  hell.  It  could  only  be 
Heaven  at  all  by  your  absence  so  long  as  —  oh, 
mark  this  —  so  long  as  you  are  what  now  you  are. 
But,  oh,  you  can  be  different ;  you  can  be  convert- 
ed ;  you  can  repent.  Burdens  to  yourselves,  curses 
to  the  world,  you  can  yet  become  true  sons  of 
God ;  you,  even  you,  may  enter  the  gates  of  pearl, 
and  cast  no  shadow  on  the  golden  streets.  For 
does  not  God  love  you,  even  you  ?  Did  not  He 
die  for  you,  even  you  ?  Your  souls  are  worthless 
to  all  but  His  infinite  love,  but  He,  in  His  divine 
pity,  did  not  think  them  worthless ;  for  their  life 
He  died.  Oh,  repent  ere  it  be  too  late,  and 
be  what  now  you  are  not,  and  be  all  that  God 
meant  you  to  be  !  "  Wash  you,  make  you  clean, 
put  away  the  evil  of  your  doings  from  before 
God's  eyes  ;  cease  to  do  evil ;  learn  to  do  well." 
Repent;  and  then  look  towards  Heaven.  Put 


2O  WHAT   HEAVEN    IS. 

away  the  love  of  money,  and  ask  God  to  give  you 
his  true  riches.  Put  away  selfishness,  and  ask 
God  to  give  you  the  Spirit  of  His  holy  love.  Put 
away  lying,  and  be  sincere.  Put  away  conceit, 
and  in  the  ashes  of  your  self-abasement,  tie  round 
you  with  knots  the  sackcloth  of  humility.  Put 
away  impurity,  and  ask  God  to  give  you  a  clean 
heart  and  put  a  right  spirit  within  you.  Ay,  .  so 
shall  you  begin  to  know  what  Heaven  is  !  so 
shall  you  begin  to  have  a  foretaste  of  its  happi- 
ness, even  amid  the  sorrows  of  earth.  So  shall 
there  be  in  your  own  hearts,  amid  all  darknesses, 
a  circle  of  radiant  peace.  Oh,  you  shall  need 
the  aid  of  no  symbols,  for  you  will  think  of 
Heaven,  not  as  of  some  meadow  of  asphodel  be- 
side the  crystal  waters,  or  golden  city  in  the  far- 
off  blue,  but  as  an  extension,  as  a  development, 
as  an  undisturbed  continuance  of  righteousness, 
and  peace,  and  joy  in  believing ;  you  shall  know 
that,  whatever  else  it  be  or  mean,  Heaven  means 
holiness;  "Heaven  means  principle;"  Jleaven 
means  to  be  one  with  God. 


IS   LIFE   WORTH   LIVING? 

"  So  we  that  are  Thy  people,  and  sheep  of  Thy  pasture,  will  give 
Thee  thanks  forever ;  and  will  always  be  showing  forth  Thy  praise, 
from  generation  to  generation."  —  Ps.  Ixxix.,  13. 

AS  the  first  day  of  this  month  was  the  grand 
festival  of  All  Saints,  so  in  past  cen- 
turies the  second  of  November  was  set  apart  in 
honour  of  "  All  Souls."  The  motives  which  led 
to  its  abolition  were  doubtless  adequate  at  the 
time,  but  yet  we  may  be  allowed  to  regret  its 
abandonment.  Undoubtedly  there  was  a  certain 
grandeur,  a  certain  catholicity,  a  certain  trium- 
phant faith,  a  certain  indomitable  hope  in  that 
ancient  commemoration  of  the  departed.  It  was 
the  feast  of  All  Souls.  It  is  true  that  it  was 
originally  intended  only  for  the  faithful  departed ; 
for  the  souls  in  purgatory.  But  in  the  title  of 
the  day,  at  any  rate,  there  was  no  exception 
made.  On  that  day  men  might  think,  if  they 
would,  of  all  the  souls,  of  all  the  innocent  little 
ones  that  have  passed  away  like  a  breath  of 
vernal  air  since  time  began ;  of  all  th£  souls 


22  /S    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING? 

which  the  great,  and  the  wise,  and  the  aged, 
have  sighed  forth  in  pain  and  weariness  after 
long  and  noble  lives ;  of  all  the  souls  of  the  wild 
races  of  hunters  and  fishermen  in  the  boundless 
prairies  or  the  icy  floes;  of  all  the  souls  that 
have  passed,  worn  and  heavy-laden,  from  the 
roaring  city  streets;  of  all  the  souls  of  those 
whose  life  has  ebbed  away  in  the  red  tide  of 
unnumbered  battles,  or  whose  bodies  have  been 
dropped  into  the  troubled  waves  unknelled,  un- 
cofrmed,  and,  save  to  their  God,  unknown ;  of  all 
the  souls,  even  of  the  guilty,  and  of  the  foolish, 
and  of  the  miserable,  and  of  those  who  have 
rushed  by  wild  self-murder  into  their  Maker's 
presence.  All  Souls'  Day  was  a  day  of  suppli- 
cation for,  of  commemoration  of,  all  these.  For 
these  too  are  souls  that  He  created ;  into  these 
too  He  breathed  the  breath  of  life ;  and  all  these 
lie  in  the  hollow  of  His  hand  as  the  snows  of 
the  countless  water  lilies  —  whether  white  and 
immaculate,  or  torn  and  stained  —  lie  all  on  the 
silver  bosom  of  the  lake.  Yes,  there  is  a  gran- 
deur and  sublimity  in  the  thoughts  of  all  human 
souls,  as  one  by  one  they  have  passed  away  and 
been  taken  to  the  mercy  of  the  Merciful ;  and  a 
day  might  well  have  been  set  apart  to  com- 


IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING?  23 

memorate,  in  all  humble  reverence,  their  awful 
immortality.  Our  finite  imaginations  may  grow 
dizzy  at  the  thought  of  these  infinite  multi- 
tudes, —  these  who  at  each  ticking  of  the  clock 
pass  from  the  one  thousand  millions  of  the  living ; 
the  tribes,  the  generations,  the  centuries,  the  mil- 
lenniums, the  aeons  of  the  dead ;  all  of  which  are 
but  the  leaves  —  green  or  fallen  —  of  the  mighty 
Tree  Existence,  —  the  wave  after  wave  of  its  il- 
limitable tide.  As  we  think  of  all  these  souls,  we 
recall  the  imagination  of  the  great  poet  of  the 
Inferno,  and  seem  to  be  gazing  on  a  white, 
rushing,  indistinguishable  whirl  of  life,  sweeping 
on  and  on  and  on,  from  horizon  to  horizon,  in 
ever  lengthening  cycles  and  infinite  processions, 
endless,  multitudinous,  innumerable,  as  the  motes 
that  people  the  sun's  beam.  To  us,  inevitably, 
in  this  infinitude,  all  individuality  is  lost ;  human 
numeration  reels  at  it.  But  it  is  not  so  with 
Him  to  whom  is  known  the  number  of  the  stars 
of  the  heaven,  and  the  sands  of  the  sea,  and  by 

"  Every  leaf  in  every  nook, 
Every  wave  in  every  brook," 

who  are  heard  as  they  sing  forth  their  unending 
paean  all  day  long.  And  knowing  this,  we  are 


24  IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING? 

not  appalled  at  the  thought  of  these  vast  multi- 
tudes, whose  bodies  are  now  the  dust  of  the  solid 
earth,  even  though  so  many  millions  of  them 
have  passed  away  in  sin  and  sorrow,  because  we 
can  say  with  the  Holy  Psalmist  of  Israel :  "  O 
let  the  sorrowful  sighing  of  the  prisoners  come 
before  Thee,  according  to  the  greatness  of  Thy 
power,  save  Thou  those  that  are  appointed  to 
die ;  so  we,  that  are  Thy  people  and  sheep  of 
Thy  pasture,  shall  give  Thee  thanks  forever, 
and  shall  always  be  shewing  forth  Thy  praise 
from  generation  to  generation." 

2.  But  if  we  cannot  say  this  at  all,  if  we 
have  lost  all  faith  in  God,  how  does  life  appear 
to  us  then  ?  There  are,  alas !  many  who  have 
lost  their  faith  in  God.  My  brethren,  it  is  not 
for  us  to  judge  them  or  to  blame  them;  nay, 
we  most  heartily  pity  them;  not,  believe  me, 
with  any  supercilious  sense  of  superiority;  not 
with  any  Pharisaic  taint  of  pride,  but  for  their 
own  sakes,  and  in  sincere  and  humble  brother- 
hood of  sympathy,  even  if  they  reject  or  despise 
such  sympathy.  Knowing  how  terrible,  how 
irreparable,  would  be  the  loss  of  such  faith  to  us, 
we  regret  their  loss ;  and  we  pray  that  they,  no 
less  than  we,  may  be  folded  at  last  in  the  arms  of 


IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING?  25 

God's  infinite  mercy,  and  led  into  the  radiance 
of  His  eternal  light.  But  seeing  that  the  faith 
of  their  childhood  and  of  their  fathers  has  suf- 
fered shipwreck ;  seeing  that  they  think,  or  think 
that  they  think,  that  there  is  no  God,  and  that 
we  die  as  the  beasts  of  the  field,  we  cannot 
wonder  that  they  ask  themselves  whether  life  be 
at  all  worth  the  living.  Nay,  we  are  glad  that 
they  should  discuss  such  questions ;  because  the 
deeper  their  bark  sinks,  the  more  sure  we  are 
that  they  must  at  last  reach  that  bed  on  which 
the  ocean  rests,  —  that  God,  whose  offspring  we 
all  are,  and  in  whom,  whether  we  deny  Him  or 
have  faith  in  Him,  we  all  live  and  move,  and  have 
our  being. 

3.  But  since  this  question  is  now  being  delib- 
erately discussed,  "  Is  life  worth  living  ? "  ought 
we  not,  as  Christians,  to  face  it  quite  fearlessly 
and  quite  faithfully  ?  It  is  not  desirable  surely 
that  we  should  separate  the  pulpit  from  the 
thoughts  of  the  week-day  world,  or  avoid  the 
questions  which  those  who  reject  and  those  who 
scorn  religion  discuss  among  themselves.  I  do 
not  believe,  my  brethren,  in  the  faith  which  can 
only  be  sheltered  by  an  effeminate  clericalism, 
or  a  professional  conventionality.  For  myself, 


26  IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING? 

I  desire  that  the  creed  of  a  Christian  clergyman 
should  be  a  manly  creed,  not  afraid  to  be  as- 
saulted— not  anxious  to  be  spoken  of  with  bated 
breath.  I  wish  that  it  should  be  no  mere  exotic, 
which  must  be  kept  under  glass  lest  any  wind  of 
heaven  should  visit  it  too  roughly;  but  that  it 
should  be  rather  like  the  green  blade  of  the  corn, 
which  every  rain-storm  may  drench,  and  on  which 
the  snow  may  lie,  and  over, which  the  scorching 
heat  may  burn  and  the  chill  wind  blow,  but  which, 
because  God's  sunlight  falls  on  it,  and  it  has  a 
principle  of  life  within,  in  spite  of,  nay,  because 
of,  every  freezing  or  blighting  influence,  grows 
up  from  the  tender  blade  to  the  green  ear,  and 
from  the  green  ear  to  the  rich  and  ripened  corn. 

4.  Is  then  life  worth  living?     Life,  I  mean, 
regarded  by  itself ;  life  on  this  earth ;  life  apart 
from  God ;  your  life,  my  life,  human  life  in  gen- 
eral, considered  under  its  purely  earthly  aspects 
and  relationships  ?     Let  us  glance  at  this  ques- 
tion, —  it  must  be  inadequately ;  it  may  be  mis- 
takenly;   it  may  be  quite  superficially,  but  yet 
(which  God  grant  us !)  with  the  one  merit  of  a 
humble  endeavour  after  perfect  honesty. 

5.  And,  in  answering  the  question,  let  us,  my 
brethren,  in  no  wise  exaggerate.    Let  no  personal 


IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING?  2/ 

circumstances,  let  no  melancholy  temperament, 
let  no  pressure  of  immediate,  and  it  may  be 
passing,  trials  bias  our  verdict.  Let  us,  so  far 
as  may  be,  look  at  life  steadily  and  whole.  It 
is  not  all  darkness  ;  it  has  its  crimson  dawns,  its 
rosy  sunsets.  It  is  not  all  clouds ;  it  has  its  sil- 
ver embroideries,  its  radiant  glimpses  of  heaven's 
blue.  It  is  not  all  winter ;  it  has  its  summer 
days  on  which  "it  is  a  luxury  to  breathe  the 
breath  of  life." 

"  Life  hath  its  May,  and  all  is  joyous  then  ; 
The  woods  are  vocal,  and  the  winds  breathe  music, 
The  very  breeze  has  mirth  in  it." 

Ask  the  happy  little  child  with  its  round 
cheeks,  and  bright  eyes,  and  flaxen  curls,  and 
pure,  sweet  face,  and  the  tender,  tender  love 
and  care  that  enfold,  and  encircle,  and  treasuic 
it,  and  smooth  its  path  the  whole  day  long ;  ask 
the  happy  boy,  tingling  with  life  to  the  finger- 
tips, making  the  fields  ring  with  his  glad  voice  on 
summer  holidays,  happy  in  unselfish  friendships, 
in  generous  impulses,  in  strong  health,  in  the 
freedom  from  all  care,  in  the  confidence  of  all 
hopes,  when  uthe  boy's  will  is  the  wind's  will, 
and  the  thoughts  of  youth  are  long ; "  ask  happy 


28  IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING? 

lovers,  when  they  know  the  joy  of  being  all  in  all 
to  each  other,  and  to  their  glad  gaze 

"  A  livelier  emerald  twinkles  in  the  grass, 
A  deeper  sapphire  melts  into  the  sea !  " 

Ask  soldiers  in  the  hour  of  victory;  ask  great 
thinkers  when  some  immortal  truth  bursts  upon 
them ;  ask  the  happy  band  who  gather  in  the  yet 
unbroken  circle  round  the  Christmas  hearths : 
or,  take  less  thrilling  moments,  and  ask  fathers 
and  mothers  when  cares  do  not  press,  and  the 
little  ones  are  gone  to  bed,  and  they  sit  together 
by  the  fireside  through  the  quiet  winter  eve ;  at 
such  times,  perhaps,  all  these  will  be  inclined  to 
tell  you  that  life  is  worth  the  living.  And  though 
such  hours  come  not  to  all,  and  come  not  alike 
to  the  good  and  evil,  to  the  wise  and  foolish,  yet 
we  all  do  have  peaceful  periods  of  our  lives ; 
quiet  intervals  at  least  between  storm  and  storm ; 
interspaces  of  sunlight  between  the  breadths  of 
gloom ;  until  over  every  one  of  us  the  night  at 
last  sweeps  down. 

6.  Yes,  my  brethren,  let  us  acknowledge,  —  let 
us  cherish,  —  let  us  be  grateful  for,  —  let  us,  as 
far  as  we  may  without  selfishness,  multiply  these 
Natural  pleasures,  these  simple,  or  innocent,  or 


IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING?  2Q 

holy  joys.  Let  us  admit,  too,  that  God  is  very, 
very  good  to  us,  and  that  the  worst  evils  of  our 
lives  are  often  in  anticipation  only,  and  of  our 
own  making,  not  of  God's.  The  Christian  is  no 
pessimist  to  encourage  in  himself  a  view  of  life 
needlessly  discouraging ;  he  is  no  ascetic,  think- 
ing that  God  cares  for  pain  or  sorrow  for  pain 
and  sorrow's  sake  ;  he  is  no  cynic,  who  walks  of 
choice  in  avenues  of  cypress.  And  yet  if  I  ask 
you  honestly  whether  these  golden  threads  of 
happiness  are  many  enough,  or  strong  enough, 
to  weave  either  the  warp  or  woof  of  life,  I  think 
I  know  what  your  answer  must  be.  Let  us  grant 
that  childhood  at  least  —  keen  as  are  its  little 
trials  —  is  yet  rarely  otherwise  than  happy,  and 
that  its  tears  are  dried  as  swiftly  as  the  dew 
upon  the  rose.  Let  us  grant,  too,  that  boyhood, 
though  St.  Augustine  truly  says  that  the  boy's 
sufferings  are  as  great  while  they  last  as  those 
of  a  man,  is  generally  happy ;  happier  since  the 
day  when  Arnold  raised  the  whole  tone  of  our 
public  schools,  happier  since  the  day  when  Shel- 
ley abhorred  the  petty  tyrannies  of  Eton,  and  the 
life  of  a  shrinking,  sensitive  boy  whose  name 
was  William  Cowper  was  darkened  here  at  West- 
minster. And  yet  not  always  happy,  I  think; 


3O  IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING? 

and  sometimes  the  source,  through  life,  of  the 
saddest  memories  and  consequences ;  and  for- 
getful, too  often,  of  the  "inevitable  congruity 
between  seed  and  fruit."  But  when  swiftly, 
imperceptibly,  boyhood  and  youth  are  over,  and 
manhood  with  all  its  cares  is  upon  us ;  when  the 
golden  gates  close  forever  behind  us,  and  we 
step  forth  into  the  thorny  wilderness;  when  the 
splendid  vision  fades  into  the  light  of  common 
day;  when  the  brilliant  ideals  and  innocent  en- 
thusiasms of  early  years  have  been  smirched, 
and  vulgarised,  and  dimmed ;  when  not  one  sin- 
gle ray  of  illusion  or  of  enchantment  rests,  were 
it  but  for  one  instant,  over  the  bleak  hills  and 
barren  wilderness  of  life  —  worn  men  and  weary 
women  —  ye  who  must  work,  and  ye  who  must 
weep  —  how  is  it  with  us  then  ? 

7.  My  brethren,  I  will  not  take  any  one  of  the 
great  crimes  of  life,  such  as  every  now  and  then 
they  are  revealed  to  us,  when  the  lurid  gaze  of 
publicity  is  cast  upon  the  interior  of  some  sub- 
urban villa  or  small  farm.  Clergymen  and 
physicians  know  well  that  these  are  more  com- 
mon than  are  ever  made  known.  I  cannot 
doubt  that  among  these  hundreds  gathered  here 
v:i  this  abbey  there  must  be  one  or  other  on 


IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING?  3! 

whose  conscience  there  lies  the  burden  of  some 
deadly  undiscovered  sin.  On  all  of  us  sin  strives 
^to  creep  with  serpent  rustlings,  silent,  gradual, 
stealthy ;  or  to  bound  from  ambush,  sudden, 
irresistible,  with  tiger  springs ;  and  there  must 
be  some  here  who  have  been  stricken  with  that 
poison  or  crushed  beneath  that  wild  beast's  force. 
But  I  will  take  no  such  cases  as  that  of  the 
clever,  handsome  youth  sinking  step  by  step  into 
dissipation,  into  forgery,  into  shame  unspeakable, 
and  the  felon's  end ;  or  as  that  of  one  who  had 
lived  his  life  honourably  before  men,  tempted 
by  fatal  money  into  crooked  ways,  and  pleading, 
with  tremulous  voice,  against  a  sentence  which 
to  him  has  the  agony  of  death.  I  will  not  even 
take  the  too  common  case  of  the  man  who  wakes 
suddenly  to  the  horrible  truth  that  he  is  a  drunk- 
ard, or  under  the  fatal  spell  of  some  craving 
appetite.  Who  shall  say  "  I  am  safe  "  even  from 
such  falls  ?  Yet  I  will  not  take  these  great  crimes 
of  life;  nor  yet  will  I  take  its  great  tragedies. 
Who  has  not  known  cases  in  which  some  man 
has  been  suddenly  beaten  down  to  earth,  bruised, 
bleeding,  under  the  shock  of  some  wholly  un- 
expected, some  quite  intolerable,  catastrophe  ? 
Who  has  not  seen  families,  bright  and  prosper- 


32  IS   LIFE   WORTH    LIVING? 

ous,  the  whole  happiness  of  whose  hearth  has 
been  shattered,  in  one  moment,  as  by  the  crash 
of  doom  ?  Who  shall  say  "  I  and  mine  are  safe 
from  these?"  Yet  I  will  not  take  these  cases. 
No,  but  I  will  take  the  common,  common  every- 
day cases  of  life ;  life's  daily  fever ;  life's  neces- 
sary trials.  My  brethren,  our  sorrows  are  quite 
different  sorrows;  but  which  of  all  of  us  —  be 
he  rich  or  poor,  be  he  noble  or  insignificant,  be  he 
senator  or  shop-boy,  —  is  exempt  from  them? 
Take  pain :  is  there  one  of  us  who  has  not  known 
the  throbbing  head,  the  aching  nerve,  the  sleep- 
less night?  Take  health:  are  there  none  here 
who  rarely  know  what  perfect  health  is?  Take 
reputation:  have  we  not  been  in  anguish  when 
cruel  and  false  things  —  or  in  yet  deeper  anguish 
when  cruel  things  and  true  things  have  been  said 
of  us  ?  Take  home :  is  there  no  household  whose 
graves  have  been  scattered  far  and  wide  ?  No 
father  who  has  seen  the  dust  sprinkled  over  the 
golden  head  of  his  dear  little  child  ?  No  mother 
whose  heart  has  not  ceased  to  ache  since  Death 
plucked  her  "  wee,  white  rose  ? "  No  husband 
from  whom  the  light  of  his  eyes  has  been  taken 
at  a  stroke  ?  No  lonely  man,  whose  circle  has 
ever  narrowed  and  narrowed,  and  whose  path  in 


IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING?  33 

life  has  been  marked  by  the  gravestones  of  his 
early  friends  ?  And,  short  of  death,  are  there  no 
parents  whose  sons  have  wrung  their  hearts  by 
folly  and  ingratitude ;  who  have,  in  some  far 
land,  a  prodigal  who  will  come  back  no  more  ? 
And,  of  all  the  hundreds  who  are  listening  to  the 
voice  of  a  weak  fellow  sinner  like  themselves, 
are  there  not  some  —  perhaps  many  —  whose 
hopes  do  but  seem  to  dwindle  and  dwindle  as 
life  goes  on ;  on  whom  'morning  never  dawns, 
but  it  dawns  upon  heavy  cares,  as  they  think 
with  a  sigh  of  the  dreary  routine  before  them ; 
of  the  insufficient  means  which  hamper  them ;  of 
the  debts  that  hang  like  a  millstone  about  their 
necks  ;  of  the  chill  discouragement  of  helpless 
and  burdened  poverty  ?  And  are  there  not  some 
who  look  forward,  almost  with  agony  to  their 
day  of  death,  and  think  how,  mayhap,  they  must 
leave  their  dear  ones  —  loved  wife,  and  little 
sons,  and  little  daughters  —  unprotected  and  un- 
provided for,  to  the  cold  pity  and  grudging  char- 
ity of  a  frosty  world  ?  How  many  might  almost 
sing  with  the  poet  as  he  sat  in  deep  dejection  on 
the  shore : 

"  Alas  1  I  have  nor  hope,  nor  health, 
Wor  peace  within,  nor  calm  around ; 


34  IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING? 

Nor  that  content,  surpassing  wealth, 
The  sage  in  contemplation  found  ; 

Others  there  are  whom  these  surround, 
Smiling  they  live,  and  call  life  pleasure ; 
To  me  that  cup  hath  been  dealt  in  far  other  measure." 

For,  alas,  my  brethren,  I  have  not  yet  told 
anything  like  the  worst !  A  man  may  bear  up 
against  sorrow.  He  may  think  it  no  great  mat- 
ter whether  he  be  happy  or  unhappy.  If  life  be 
not  sweet  to  him,  but  bitter,  he  may  yet  think  it 
to  be  borne.  If  he  be  a  true  Christian  he  may 
say :  "  I  have  received  the  cross,  I  have  received 
it  at  Thy  hands ;  I  will  bear  it,  and  bear  it  till 
death,  as  Thou  hast  laid  it  upon  me."  But  when 
to  all  this  sin  is  added ;  when  "  calamity  meets 
an  accusing  conscience ; "  when  a  man  has  the 
sense  of  wasted  opportunities,  the  shame  of  for- 
saken ideals,  the  sting  of  evil  memories,  and  the 
plague  of  polluted  and  polluting  thoughts ;  when, 
even  at  the  best,  he  feels  that,  in  this  or  that  act 
or  phase  of  his  life  he  was  unloving,  ignoble, 
uncandid,  not  what  he  ought  to  have  been,  not 
what  God  would  have  had  him  be,  ah  !  to  the 
noble  heart  is  there  not  sorrow,  is  there  not  an- 
guish here?  Apart  from  deeper  and  darker 


IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING?  35 

errors,  is  there  not  the  sense  we  all  must  have 
of  duties  unfulfilled;  of  holy  things  neglected; 
"  of  days  wasted  forever ;  of  affections  in  our- 
selves or  others  trifled  with ;  of  light  within 
turned  to  darkness  ? "  Ah  !  when,  with  our  souls, 
the  treacherous  dealers  have  dealt  treacherously, 
yea,  the  treacherous  dealers  have  dealt  very 
treacherously,  and  we  have  been  the  worst  treach- 
erous dealers  to  ourselves,  does  life  seem  worth 
having  then  ?  Should  we  not  say : 

"  Alas  for  man  if  this  were  all, 
And  nought  beyond,  O  earth  "  ? 

8.  So  that,  when  I  look  at  life  I  say,  "  Lead, 
lead  me  on,  my  hopes  !  " 

But  if  you  ask  me  whether  life  without  God 
in  the  world,  and  with  no  hope  beyond,  is  worth 
having,  I  answer,  "  JV0 /"  nor  is  it  I  only  who 
say  it,  but  all  the  best,  and  greatest,  and  wisest 
of  mankind.  Ask  the  kings  and  queens,  ask  the 
poets  and  scholars,  ask  the  warriors  and  states- 
men, whose  dust  lies  buried  here !  Was  Eliza- 
beth happy  ?  was  Chatham  happy  ?  was  Spenser 
happy  ?  was  even  Newton  happy  ?  Ah !  no. 
Over  the  volumes  of  human  history  is  written  : 
"  Vanity  of  vanities ! "  and  the  volumes  of  biog- 


36  IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING? 

raphy  are  full  of  lamentation  and  moaning  and 
woe.  Scripture  itself  is  a  record  of  human  sor- 
row. I  am  well  aware  that  they  who  would  rob 
us  of  all  our  hopes ;  who  would  take  away  our 
Lord  out  of  the  sepulchre,  so  that  we  know  not 
where  they  have  laid  Him ;  who  would  change 
our  God  into  a  struggle  of  careless  forces  or  a 
complexity  of  impersonal  laws ;  who  would  turn 
all  creation  for  us  into  a  mask  with  no  living  face 
behind  it,  or  a  hollow  eye-socket  in  which  no  eye 
of  love  or  mercy  ever  shone  —  I  know  that  they 
tell  us  that  all  this  makes  no  difference,  and  offer 
us,  for  God,  I  know  not  what  goddess  of  human- 
ity ;  and  I  know  not  what  "  posthumous  activity," 
for  a  life  beyond  the  grave.  My  brethren,  if 
they  want  to  take  our  fine  gold  from  us,  we  want 
no  dross  or  tinfoil  in  its  place ;  nor  for  the  dia- 
monds of  heaven  will  we  take  glass  and  paste. 
Some  of  us,  at  least,  will  cling  to  duty,  though 
duty  be  robbed  of  all  her  sanctions ;  and  to 
virtue,  though  virtue  lose  every  shadow  of  her 
reward.  We  do  not  need  these  sham  gods  and 
mock  eternities ;  and  as  for  the  world,  if  religion 
fail  to  save  it  from  wickedness,  God  only  knows 
what  atheism  will  do.  It  will  not  be  content 
with  lacquer  religions  and  pinchbeck  faiths.  It 


is  LIFE  WORTH  LIVING  ?  37 

will  go  its  way,  picking  and  stealing,  chambering 
and  wantoning,  lying  and  slandering,  till  the  pit 
swallow  it ;  and  the  sole  logical  result  of  scepti- 
cism is  that  which  is  openly  proclaimed  by  the 
coryphaeus  of  materialism,  the  deification  of  sui- 
cide, the  end  of  evil  and  futile  misery  by  the 
extinction  and  annihilation  of  the  human  race. 

9.  But,  oh !  my  brethren,  if  you  will  listen  to 
me  for  a  moment  more,  how,  when  it  is  touched 
by  one  ray  out  of  God's  eternity,  does  this  blank 
materialism  —  this  grotto  of  icicles  in  the  Valley 
of  the  Shadow  of  Death  —  melt  into  mud  and 
nothingness  !  How  does  this  glaring  metal  colos- 
sus, with  its  golden  head  of  intellectualism,  tum- 
ble into  impotency  when  the  rock  of  faith  smites 
it  on  its  feet  of  miry  clay !  If  there  be  no  hope, 
and  no  God,  and  no  things  unseen,  if  there  be 
no  atonement  for  the  intolerable  wrong,  if  pray- 
ing nations  uplift  their  hands  in  vain,  if  only  a 
hollow  echo  followed  Christ's  prayer  of  agony 
upon  the  cross,  then,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  life  is 
a  revolting  nullity  and  a  hideous  dream  which 
no  poetic  make-believes  can  redeem  from  its  in- 
tolerable weariness.  But  let  but  one  whisper  of 
God's  voice  thrill  the  deafened  sense ;  let  but  one 
glearn  of  His  countenance  flash  on  the  blinded 


38  IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING? 

eyes ;  let  His  hand  hold  forth  to  us  but  one 
green  leaf  from  the  Tree  of  Life ;  and  how  is 
all  changed !  Ah,  how  can  we  then  thank  God 
for  our  creation,  preservation,  and  all  the  bless- 
ings of  this  life  !  How  can  we  cry  then  wit!; 
bursts  of  exultation :  "  Thou,  O  God,  art  our 
Father,  our  Saviour,  our  merciful  God ;  and  we 
that  are  Thy  people  and  the  sheep  of  Thy  pas- 
ture will  give  Thee  thanks  forever ! "  If  our 
thoughts  have  come  to  us  this  afternoon  "  clothed 
in  a  cloud,"  let  them  depart  "  encircled  with  a 
rainbow."  That  rainbow  may  seem  at  times  to 
be  but  a  watery  image,  yet  it  arches  the  spray 
of  the  cataract,  it  shines  upon  the  menace  of 
the  storm.  Sorrows  ?  yes  but  to  us  they  are  but 
mercies  in  disguise.  Sins  ?  ah,  yes !  but  they 
are  forgiven  and  cast  away.  Is  life  worth  living  ? 
Ask  the  atheist,  and  if  he  tells  you  his  real 
thought  it  must  be  that  of  the  Greek  poet, 
"  That  it  were  best  never  to  have  been  born,  and 
next  best  to  depart  as  soon  as  possible ;  "  or  that 
of  the  English  poet : 

"  Count  o'er  the  joys  thine  hours  have  seen, 
Count  o'er  thy  days  from  anguish  free ; 
And  know  whatever  thou  hast  been, 
'Tis  something  better  not  to  be." 


IS    LIFE    WORTH    LIVING?  39 

But  ask  the  Christian  "  Is  life  worth  living  ? " 
and  he  will  answer :  "  Ay !  indeed,  life  is  infin- 
itely worth  living,  and  death  is  even  infinitely 
more  worth  dying ;  for  to  live  is  Christ  and  to 
die  is  gain.  To  live  is  to  have  faith  in  God,  and 
to  die  is  to  be  with  Him  forevermore." 

"  Death  is  the  veil  which  they  who  live  call  life ; 
We  sleep,  and  it  is  lifted." 


"HELL"  — WHAT   IT   IS   NOT. 


"  For  this  cause  was  the  Gospel  preached  also  to  them  that  are  dead." 
—i  PUT.  iv.,  6. 

WHEN  I  spoke  from  this  place  last  Sunday 
on  the  question,  "Is  life  worth  living  ? " 
when  I  preached  three  Sundays  ago  on  Heaven, 
some  of  you  may  possibly  have  thought :  This 
is  all  very  well  for  true  Christians  ;  all  very  well 
if  in  this  world  there  were  only  saints ;  but  the 
saints  are  few  in  number,  and  this  world  is  full 
of  sinners.  See  what  a  spectacle  it  presents! 
Look  at  the  coarseness  and  foulness  exhibited 
at  every  turn  in  the  streets  around  us.  Walk 
at  night  in  squalid  purlieus,  not  a  stone's  throw 
from  this  abbey,  where  glaring  gin-palaces  are 
busy,  .and  amid  the  reek  of  alcohol  you  may 
hear  snatches  of  foul  oaths  and  odious  songs; 
where  women  sit  shuddering  in  wretched  garrets, 
to  think  of  the  brutal  hands  which  will  strike,  at 
the  brutal  feet  that  will  kick  them,  when  the 

4° 


"HELL" — WHAT  IT  is  NOT.          41 

drunkard  staggers  home ;  where  the  young  lads 
of  the  schools  over  which  we  spend  so  many 
millions  of  money  are  being  daily  ruined  and 
depraved  by  being  allured  into  low  haunts  of 
gambling  and  degradation.  Or  walk  in  the 
thronged  haunts  of  commerce,  where  myriads  are 
utterly  and  recklessly  absorbed  in  that  hasting  to 
be  rich  which  shall  not  be  innocent;  or  judge 
from  the  vile  phases  of  the  stage  and  the  opera, 
that  vice  in  higher  places  is  none  the  less  dan- 
gerous from  being  gilded  and  perfumed ;  note  all 
these  facts  —  you  may  say  —  and  then  tell  us, 
not  in  an  ideal  world,  but  in  this  world,  which 
looks  too  often  as  though  it  were  a  world  without 
souls  —  in  this  world  where  there  is  so  much  of 
cruel  selfishness,  of  degraded  purpose,  of  ser- 
pentine malice,  of  insane  desire,  —  tell  us,  in 
such  a  world  as  this,  how  does  all  that  you  have 
said  apply  ?  Alas !  the  vast  majority  of  men 
and  women  whom  we  see  are  not  saints,  but 
sinners,  and  contented  with  their  sins,  and 
living  in  their  sins ;  and  covetousness,  and 
drunkenness,  and  lust,  and  lying,  and  dishonesty, 
and  hatred,  claim  each  their  multitude  of  votaries 
and  of  victims.  Have  you  then  any  right  to 
paint  the  world  in  rose-colour?  Is  it  not  mere 


42  "  HELL     -  -  WHAT    IT    IS    NOT. 

insincerity,  mere  clericalism,  to  shut  your  eyes  to 
patent  facts  ?  We,  who,  by  our  very  presence 
here,  show  that  we  do  not  belong  to  classes 
openly  and  flagrantly  irreligious,  are  yet,  many 
of  us,  great  sinners.  Even  when  there  is  no  ( 
dread  crime  upon  our  consciences,  many  of  us 
are  far  from  God ;  our  hearts  are  stained  through 
and  through  by  evil  passions  ;  we  are  tied  and 
bound  with  the  chain  of  our  sins.  You  bid  us 
repent;  but  how  many  do  repent?  You  the 
clergy,  who  stand  often  by  the  bedsides  of 
the  dying;  you  who  know  how  men  live,  and 
know  that  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten  they  die  as 
they  have  lived,  —  if  your  theory  of  life  is  to  be 
complete  —  if  it  is  not  to  be  a  mere  hollow  pro- 
fessional sham  —  what  do  you  think  about  the 
future  ?  Tell  us  about  the  lost ! 

2.  My  brethren,  you  have  the  fullest  right  to 
ask  these  questions,  and  it  is  our  bounden  duty 
to  answer  them  ;  and  I  for  one  —  in  all  deep 
humility  —  yet,  now  and  always  asking  God  for  ' 
fearless  courage  and  perfect  honesty  —  will  try 
to  give  you  such  answer  as  I  can.  If  it  be  but 
the  fragment  of  an  answer,  it  is  because  I  believe 
it  to  be  God's  will  that  no  other  should  be  pos- 
sible ;  but  at  least  I  shall  strive  to  speak  such 


"HELL     WHAT    IT    IS    NOT.  43 

truth  as  is  given  me  to  see,  and  to  answer  no 
man  according  to  his  idols.  Those  who  take 
loose  conjectures  for  established  certainties ; 
those  who  care  more  for  authority  than  for 
reason  and  conscience  ;  those  who  pretend  to 
dignify  with  the  name  of  Scriptural  argument  the 
"  ever- widening  spirals  "  of  dim  and  attenuated 
inference  out  of  "the  narrow  aperture  of  single 
texts ;  "  those  who  talk  with  the  self-complacency 
of  an  ignorance  that  takes  itself  for  knowledge, 
as  though  they  alone  had  been  admitted  into 
what  —  with  unconscious  heresy  and  uninten- 
tional irreverence  —  they  call  "  the  council- 
chambers  of  the  Trinity,"  —  they  may  be  ready 
with  glaring  and  abhorrent  pictures  of  fire  and 
brimstone  ;  and  those  of  them  who  are  not  ten- 
der, and  not  true,  may  feel  the  consolatory  glow 
of  personal  security,  as  they  dilate  upon  the 
awfulness  and  the  finality  of  the  sufferings  of 
the  damned.  But  those  whose  faith  must  have 
a  broader  basis  than  the  halting  reconciliation 
of  ambiguous  and  opposing  texts ;  they  who 
grieve  at  the  dark  shadows  flung  by  human 
theologians  athwart  God's  light ;  they  who  believe 
that  reason,  and  conscience,  and  experience,  as 
well  as  Scripture,  are  books  of  God,  which  must 


44  "  HELL  ' WHAT    IT    IS    NOT. 

have  a  direct  voice  in  these  great  decisions,  they 
will  not  be  so  ready  to  snatch  God's  thunder  into 
their  own  wretched  and  feeble  hands  ;  they  will 
lay  their  mouths  in  the  dust,  rather  than  make 
sad  the  hearts  which  God  hath  not  made  sad  ; 
they  will  take  into  account  the  grand  principles 
which  dominate  through  Scripture  no  less  than 
its  isolated  expressions ;  and  undeterred  by  the 
base  and  feeble  notion  that  virtue  would  be 
impossible  without  the  horrors  of  an  endless 
hell,  they  will  declare  their  hope  and  trust — if 
it  be  not  permitted  us  to  go  so  far  in  this  matter 
as  belief  and  confidence  —  that,  even  after  death, 
through  the  infinite  mercy  of  the  loving  Father, 
many  of  the  dead  shall  be  alive  again  and  the 
lost  be  found. 

3.  I  cannot  pretend,  my  brethren,  to  exhaust 
in  one  sermon  a  question  on  which  whole  vol-  | 
umes  have  been  written.  There  are  some  of  the 
young  in  this  congregation  ;  many  of  you,  I  re- 
gret to  see,  are  standing  —  I  am  reluctant  ever 
to  trespass  too  long  on  your  attention,  and  cannot 
therefore  profess  to-day  to  meet  and  to  silence 
all  objections.  But  one  thing  I  can  do  —  which 
is  to  tell  you  plainly,  what,  after  years  of  thought 
on  this  subject,  I  believe  ;  and  what  I  know  to 


"HELL     WHAT    IT    IS    NOT.  45 

be  the  belief  of  multitudes,  and  of  yearly  increas- 
ing multitudes,  of  the  wisest  and  most  learned 
both  of  the  laity  and  of  the  clergy  in  our  English 
Church. 

4.  What  the  popular  notion  of  hell  is,  you,  my 
brethren,  are  all  aware.  Many  of  us  were  scared 
with  it,  horrified  with  it,  perhaps  almost  mad- 
dened by  it  in  our  childhood.  It  is  that,  the 
moment  a  human  being  dies  —  at  whatever  age, 
under  whatever  disadvantages  —  his  fate  is  sealed 
hopelessly  and  forever ;  and  that  if  he  die  in  un- 
repented  sin,  that  fate  is  a  never  ending  agony, 
amid  physical  tortures  the  most  frightful  that 
can  be  imagined ;  so  that,  when  we  think  of  the 
future  of  the  human  race,  we  must  conceive  of 
"a  vast  and  burning  prison,  in  which  the  lost 
souls  of  millions  and  millions  writhe  and  shriek 
forever,  tormented  in  a  flame  that  never  will  be 
quenched."  You  have  only  to  read  the  manuals, 
you  have  only  to  study  the  pictures  published, 
though  but  rarely,  by  members  of  our  own 
Church,  and  more  frequently  by  some  Roman 
Catholics  on  the  one  hand,  and  some  sections  of 
Nonconformists  on  the  other,  to  see  that  such 
has  been  and  is  the  common  belief  of  Christen- 
dom. You  know  how  Dante,  in  his  vision,  comes 


46  "  HELL  "-  -WHAT    IT    IS    NOT. 

to  a  dark  wall  of  rock,  and  sees  —  blacker  in  the 
blackness  —  the  chasm  of  hell's  colossal  portal, 
and,  over  it,  in  characters  of  gloom,  the  awful 

line : 

"  All  hope  abandon,  ye  who  enter  here ;  " 

and  how,  passing  through  it,  they  reach  a  place 
where,  in  the  mere  vestibule,  and  even  before 
they  reach  the  region  of  more  frightful  agonies, 
sighs  and  wailings  trembled  through  the  starless 
void,  and  the  sound  of  voices  deep  and  hoarse, 
and  hands  smitten  wildly  together,  whirling  al- 
ways through  the  stained  and  murky  air.  But  it 
is  even  more  awful  to  find  such  things  in  our  own 
great  writers,  who  had  no  belief,  like  Dante,  in 
that  "  willing  agony,"  of  purgatory,  into  which 
poor  souls  might  gladly  plunge,  assured  that  at 
last,  redeemed  and  purified,  they  too  should  pass 
into  their  paradisal  rest.  Read  how  the  great 
Milton,  after  telling  us  of  "  the  supereminence  of 
beatific  vision,"  plunges  at  once  into  the  frightful 
sentence  that  they  who  have  been  wicked  in  high 
places,  "  after  a  shameful  end  in  this  life  (which 
God  grant  them),  shall  be  thrown  downe  eternally 
into  the  deepest  and  darkest  gulfe  of  hell,  where 
under  the  despightfull  controule,  the  trample  and 
spurn  of  all  the  other  damned,  that,  in  the  an- 


"HELL"-— WHAT  IT  is  NOT.          47 

guish  of  their  torture,  shall  have  no  other  ease 
than  to  exercise  a  raving  and  bestiall  tyranny 
over  them  as  their  slaves  and  negroes,  they  shall 
remaine  in  that  plight  forever, —  the  basest,  the 
lowermost,  the  most  dejected,  most  underfoot  and 
downe-trodden  vassals  of  perdition."  Or  read 
Bishop  Jeremy  Taylor's  sermon  on  Christ's  Ad- 
vent to  Judgment,  and  see  how  his  imagination 
revels  in  the  "  Tartarean  drench  "which  he  pours 
over  his  lurid  page,  when  he  tells  us  how  "  God's 
heavy  hand  shall  press  the  sanies  and  the  intoler- 
ableness,  the  obliquity,  and  the  unreasonable- 
ness, the  amazement  and  the  disorder,  the  smart 
and  the  sorrow,  the  guilt  and  the  punishment,  out 
from  all  our  sins,  and  pour  them  into  one  chalice, 
and  mingle  them  with  an  infinite  wrath,  and  make 
the  wicked  drink  off  all  the  vengeance,  and  force 
it  down  their  unwilling  throats,  with  the  violence 
of  devils  and  accursed  spirits."  Or,  once  more, 
read  in  Henry  Smith  —  the  silver-tongued  Plato- 
nist  of  Cambridge  —  how,  when  iniquity  hath 
played  her  part,  "  all  the  Furies  of  Hell  leap 
upon  the  man's  heart,  like  a  stage. —  Thought 
calleth  to  Fear ;  Fear  whistleth  to  Horror ;  Hor- 
ror beckoneth  to  Despair,  and  saith,  '  Come  and 
help  me  torment  this  sinner.'  .  .  .  Irons  are  laid 


48          "HELL"  -WHAT  IT  is  NOT. 

upon  his  body,  like  a  prisoner.  All  his  lights 
are  put  out  at  once."  Can  we  wonder  that,  re- 
ceiving and  believing  such  doctrines,  the  poet 
Habington  writes  : 

"  Fix  me  on  some  bieake  precipice, 

Where  I  ten  thousand  years  may  stand, 
Made  now  a  statua  of  ice, 

Then  by  the  summer  scorch'd  and  tann'd  ! 
Place  me  alone  in  some  fraile  boate 

'  Mid  the  horrours  of  an  angry  sea ; 
Where  I,  while  time  shall  move,  may  floate, 

Despairing  either  land  or  day  : 
Or,  under  earth  my  youth  confine 

To  th'  night  and  silence  of  a  cell, 
Where  scorpions  may  my  limbs  entwine, 

O  God  !  so  thou  forgive  me  hell  1  " 

or  that  Shakespeare,  after  lines  of  marvellous 
power,  should  exclaim : 

"  T  is  too  horrible ; 

The  weariest  and  most  loathed  earthly  life 
Which  age,  ache,  penury,  and  imprisonment 
Can  lay  on  nature,  is  a  paradise 
To  what  we  fear  of  death  !  " 

5.  Well,  my  brethren,  happily  the  thoughts 
and  hearts  of  men  are  often  far  gentler  and 
nobler  than  the  formulae  of  their  creeds;  and 
custom  and  tradition  prevent  even  the  greatest 


"HELL     . —  WHAT    IT    IS    NOT.  49 

from  facing  the  full  meaning  and  consequences 
of  the  words  they  use. 

When  Milton  talks  thus  of  hell  he  is  but  giv- 
ing form  and  colour  to  his  burning  hatred  of  irre- 
sistible tyranny  and  triumphant  wrong ;  when 
Jeremy  Taylor  and  other  great  divines  and  poets 
wrote  thus  of  it,  they  gave  us  but  the  ebullient 
flashes  from  the  glowing  caldron  of  a  kindled 
imagination.  What  they  say  is  but,  as  it  were, 
the  poetry  of  indignation.  It  is  only  when  these 
topics  fall  into  vulgar  handling, —  it  is  only  when 
they  reek  like  acrid  fumes  from  the  poisoned 
crucible  of  mean  and  loveless  conceptions, —  that 
we  see  them  in  all  their  intolerable  ghastliness. 
Many  true  and  loving  Christians  have,  I  know, 
held  these  views,  and  have  mourned  with  aching 
hearts  over  what  seemed  to  them  the  fatal  neces- 
sity for  believing  them.  But  others,  less  good 
and  less  pure,  have  exulted  in  them,  and  I  know 
nothing  more  calculated  to  make  the  whole  soul 
revolt  with  loathing  from  every  doctrine  of  religion 
than  the  evil  complacency  with  which  some  cheer- 
fully accept  the  belief  that  they  are  living  and 
moving  in  the  midst  of  millions  doomed  irrevers- 
ibly to  everlasting  perdition.  St.  Augustine  dared 
to  say  that  infants  dying  unbaptised  would  cer 


50          "HELL" — WHAT  IT  is  NOT. 

tainly  be  damned,  though  only  with  a  levissima 
damnatio.  Even  St.  Thomas  of  Aquinum  lent 
his  saintly  name  to  what  I  can  only  call  the 
abominable  fancy  that  the  bliss  of  the  saved  may 
be  all  the  more  keen  because  they  are  permitted 
to  gaze  on  the  punishment  of  the  wicked.  Boston, 
in  his  " Fourfold  State"  talks  of  God  holding  up 
the  wicked  in  hell-fire  with  the  one  hand,  and  tor 
menting  them  with  the  other.  Now  even  a  saint 
of  God  sins  when  he  speaks  thus,  and  is  setting 
up  in  the  place  of  God  the  Idol  of  the  Tribe  or 
of  the  Den,  and  no  language  can  be  stern  enough 
to  reprobate  the  manner  in  which  some,  who  are 
not  saints  of  God  at  all,  who  are  not  even  the 
elder  brother  of  the  Prodigal,  whose  religion  has 
resolved  itself  into  a  mere  feeble  heresy-hunting, 
have  turned  God's  gospel  of  plenteous  redemp- 
tion into  an  anathema  of  all  but  universal  perdi- 
tion. Which  of  us  has  not  heard  sermons,  or 
read  books  to  the  effect  that  if  every  leaf  of  the 
forest  trees,  and  every  grain  of  the  ocean  sands 
stood  for  billions  of  years,  and  all  these  billions 
were  exhausted,  you  would  still  be  no  nearer 
even  to  the  beginning  of  eternity  than  at  the  first ; 
and  that  (pardon  me  for  reproducing  what  I  ab- 
hor) if  you  could  conceive  an  everlasting  tooth- 


" HELL"-  -WHAT  IT  is  IWK          51 

ache,  or  an  endless  cautery,  or  the  incessant 
scream  of  a  sufferer  beneath  the  knife,  that  would 
give  you  but  a  faint  conception  of  the  agony  of 
hell ;  and  yet  in  the  same  breath  that  the  major- 
ity of  mankind  are  doomed  to  hell  by  an  absolute 
predestination  ?  Which  of  us  has  not  heard 
teaching  which  implied,  or  did  not  even  shrink 
from  stating  this?  And  dare  any  one  of  you 
regard  such  teaching  as  other  than  blasphemy 
against  the  merciful  God?  If  you  are  not  un- 
affected when  "  the  destitute  perish  of  hunger,  or 
the  dying  agonise  in  pain,"  is  there  any  human 
being,  worthy  the  dignity  of  a  human  being,  whose 
soul  does  not  revolt  and  sicken  at  the  notion  of 
"  a  world  all  worm  and  flame  "  ?  One  who  is  not 
of  us  wrote  yesterday  to  the  Times,  how,  stand- 
ing in  that  Parisian  prison  where  the  Girondists 
held  their  last  supper ;  whence  Danton  passed  to 
his  scaffold  ;  where  Robespierre,  the  night  before 
his  execution,  lay  weltering  in  his  blood ;  where 
Marie  Antoinette  poured  out  her  soul  in  the  last 
hour  of  her  life ;  he  saw  an  exquisite  crucifix  of 
ivory  in  the  cell  where  it  had  been  left  since  that 
queen,  and  wife,  and  mother  had  turned  to  it  all 
night  in  her  last  agony ;  and  he  adds  that,  in  such 
a  scene  as  that,  all  logic,  doctrine,  politics,  sever- 


52          "HELL" — WHAT  IT  is  NOT. 

ity  of  judgment  are  hushed,  and  "  Human  nature 
asserts  its  preeminence,  and  claims  the  whole  field 
of  thought  for  pity.  In  presence  of  that  agonising 
figuie  on  the  cross,  the  whole  soul  revolts  against 
judicial  terrorism  in  whatsoever  name,  by  what- 
soever tyrant  committed."  He  is  speaking,  of 
course,  of  earthly  tyrants;  but,  my  brethren, 
"  Shall  not  the  Judge  of  all  the  earth  do  right  ? ' 
and  shall  the  image  of  the  crucified  Redeemer 
inspire,  in  one  who  rejects  His  divinity,  the  noble 
pity  which  seems  as  if  it  were  alien  to  many  of 
His  sons  ?  I  can  sympathise  with  the  living  poet 
when  he  cries : 

"  Were  it  not  thus,  O  King  of  my  salvation, 

Many  would  curse  to  Thee,  and  I  for  one, 
Fling  Thee  Thy  bliss,  and  snatch  at  Thy  damnation, 

Scorn  and  abhor  the  shining  of  the  sun ; 
Ring  with  a  reckless  shivering  of  laughter, 

Wroth  at  the  woe  which  Thou  hast  seen  so  long, 
Question  if  any  recompense  hereafter 

Waits  to  atone  the  intolerable  wrong." 

If  St.  Paul,  again  and  again,  flings  from  him, 
with  a  "  God  forbid  ! "  the  conclusions  of  an  ap- 
parently irresistible  logic,  we  surely,  who  have 
very  little  logic  of  any  kind  against  us  in  this 
matter,  but  only  questionable  exegesis,  supported 


"HELL     WHAT    IT    IS    NOT.  53 

in  too  many  instances  by  spiritual  selfishness  and 
impenetrable  prejudice,  do  in  the  high  name  of 
the  outraged  conscience  of  humanity,  —  nay,  in 
the  far  higher  names  of  the  God  who  loves,  of 
the  Saviour  who  died  for,  of  the  Spirit  who 
enlightens  us,  —  hurl  from  us  representations  so 
cruel,  of  a  doctrine  so  horrible,  with  every  nerve 
and  fibre  of  our  intellectual,  moral,  and  spiritual 
life.  Ignorance  may  make  a  fetish  of  such  a 
doctrine  if  it  will;  Pharisaism  may  inscribe  it 
upon  its  phylacteries;  hatred  may  write  it, 
instead  of  "  Holiness  to  the  Lord,"  on  the 
sacerdotal  petalon  in  which  it  degrades  and  simu- 
lates the  name  of  love ;  but  here,  in  this  vast 
mausoleum  of  the  glorious  dead,  here  amid  the 
silent  memorials  of  the  sons  of  fame  and  the 
fathers  who  begat  us,  of  whom  many,  though 
not  saints,  were  yet  noble,  though  erring  men,  — 
and  of  whom  (though  they,  and  we  alike,  shall 
suffer,  both  here  and  hereafter,  the  penalty  of 
unrepentant  sin)  we  yet  cannot  and  will  not 
think  as  damned  to  unutterable  tortures  by  irre- 
versible decrees,  —  I  repudiate  these  crude  and 
glaring  travesties  of  the  awful  and  holy  will  of 
God ;  I  arraign  them  as  ignorantly  merciless ;  I 
impeach  them  as  a  falsehood  against  Christ's 


54  "HELL        -WHAT    IT    IS    NOT. 

universal  and  absolute  redemption  ;  I  denounce 
them  as  a  blasphemy  against  God's  exceeding 
and  eternal  love  !  And  more  acceptable,  I  am 
very  sure,  than  the  rigidest  and  most  uncompro- 
mising self-styled  orthodoxy  of  all  the  Pharisees 
who  have  ever  judged  their  brethren  since  time 
began  —  more  acceptable  by  far  to  Him,  the 
friend  of  publicans  and  sinners,  who,  on  His 
cross,  prayed  for  His  murderers,  and  who  died 
that  we  might  live  —  more  acceptable,  I  say,  by 
far,  than  the  delight  which  amid  a  deluge  of  ruin 
hugs  itself  upon  the  plank  which  it  has  seized  — 
would  be  the  noble  and  trembling  pity  —  so  fear- 
fully unlike  the  language  of  divines  and  school- 
men, —  which  made  St.  Paul  ready  to  be 
anathema  from  Christ  for  the  sake  of  his  breth- 
ren; which  made  Moses  cry  to  his  God  at 
Sinai :  "  Oh,  this  people  have  sinned ;  and  now, 
if  Thou  wilt  forgive  their  sin  — ;  and  if  not,  blot 
me,  I  pray  Thee,  out  of  Thy  book  which  Thou 
hast  written." 

6.  But  I  would  ask  you  to  believe,  my  breth- 
ren, that  I  speak  now  no  longer  with  natural 
passion,  but  with  most  accurate  theological  pre- 
cision, when  I  say  that,  though  texts  may  be 
quoted  which  give  prima  facie  plausibility  to  such 


"HELL" — WHAT    IT    IS    NOT.  ly 

modes  of  teaching,  yet,  to  say  nothing  of  the  fact 
that  the  light  and  love  which  God  Himself  has 
kindled  in  us  recoil  from  them,  those  texts  are, 
in  the  first  place,  alien  to  the  broad  unifying 
principles  of  Scripture  ;  that  they  are  founded 
on  interpretations  which  have  appeared  to  many 
wise  men  to  be  demonstrably  groundless ;  and 
that  for  every  one  so  quoted,  two  can  be  adduced 
whose  prima  facie  and  literal  interpretation  tells 
on  the  other  side.  There  is  an  old,  sensible, 
admitted  rule,  "  Theologia  symbolica  non  est  demon- 
strativa  " —  in  other  words,  that  phrases  which 
belong  to  metaphor,  to  imagery,  to  poetry,  to 
emotion,  are  not  to  be  formulated  into  necessary 
dogma,  or  crystallised  into  rigid  creed.  Tested 
by  this  rule,  nine-tenths  of  the  phrases  on  which 
these  views  are  built  fall  utterly  to  the  ground. 
But  even  were  this  otherwise,  yet,  once  more,  in 
the  name  of  Christian  light  and  Christian  liberty ; 
once  more  in  the  name  of  Christ's  promised 
Spirit;  once  more  in  the  name  of  the  broad- 
ened dawn,  and  the  daystar  which  has  arisen  in 
our  hearts,  I  protest  at  once  and  finally  against 
this  ignorant  tyranny  of  isolated  texts  which  has 
ever  been  the  curse  of  Christian  truth,  the  glory 
of  narrow  intellects,  and  the  cause  of  the  worst 


5*>          "HELL" — WHAT  IT  is  NOT. 

errors  of  the  worst  days  of  the  corrupted  Church. 
Tyranny  has  engraved  texts  upon  her  sword; 
Oppression  has  carved  texts  upon  her  fetters; 
Cruelty  has  tied  texts  around  ^er  fagots  ;  Igno- 
i^nce  has  set  knowledge  at  defiance  with  texts 
woven  on  her  flag.  Gin-drinking  has  been  de- 
fended out  of  Timothy,  and  slavery  has  made  a 
stronghold  out  of  Philemon.  The  devil,  as  we 
all  know,  can  quote  texts  for  his  purpose.  They 
were  quoted  by  the  Pharisees,  not  once  or  twice 
only,  against  our  Lord  Himself,  and  when  St. 
Paul  fought  the  great  battle  of  Christian  freedom 
against  the  curse  of  Law,  he  was  anathematised 
with  a  whole  Pentateuch  of  opposing  texts.  But 
we,  my  brethren,  are  in  the  dispensation  of  the 
Holy  Spirit.  Our  guide  is  the  Scriptures  of  God 
in  their  broad  outlines ;  the  Revelation  of  God 
in  its  glorious  unity ;  the  books  of  God  in  their 
eternal  simplicity,  read  by  the  illumination  of 
that  Spirit  of  Christ  which  dwelleth  in  us,  except 
we  be  reprobates.  Our  guide  is  not,  and  never 
shall  be,  what  the  Scriptures  call  "  the  letter  that 
killeth  ; "  the  tyrannous  realism  of  ambiguous 
metaphors,  the  asserted  infallibility  of  isolated 
words.  But  if  this  must  be  made  simply  and 
solely  a  matter  of  texts  —  if, "except  as  a  dead 


"HELL" — WHAT  IT  is  NOT.          57 

anachronism,  we  mean  nothing  when  we  say,  "  I 
believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost !  "  —  if  we  prefer  our 
sleepy  shibboleths  and  dead  traditions  to  the 
living  promise,  "  I  will  dwell  in  them  and  walk  in 
them"  —  then  by  all  means  let  this  question  be 
decided  by  texts  alone.  I  am  quite  content  that 
texts  should  decide  it.  Only,  first,  you  must  go 
to  the  inspired  original,  not  to  the  erroneous 
translation ;  and,  secondly,  you  must  take  words, 
and  interpret  words  in  their  proper  and  historical 
significance,  not  in  that  sense  which  makes  them 
connote  to  you  a  thousand  notions  which  did  not 
originally  belong  to  them ;  and,  thirdly,  you  must 
not  explain  away,  or  read  between  the  lines  of 
the  texts  which  make  against  the  traditional  view, 
while  you  refuse  all  limitation  of  those  on  the 
misinterpretation  or  undue  extension  of  which 
that  view  is  founded.  Now  I  ask  you,  my  breth- 
ren, where  would  be  these  popular  teachings 
about  hell  —  the  kind  of  teachings  which  I  have 
quoted  to  you  and  described  —  if  we  calmly  and 
deliberately,  by  substituting  the  true  translations, 
erased  from  our  English  Bibles,  as  being  inade- 
quate or  erroneous,  or  disputed  renderings,  the 
three  words,  "damnation,"  "hell,"  and  "ever- 
lasting "  ?  Yet  I  say,  unhesitatingly,  —  I  say, 


58          "HELL"-— WHAT  IT  is  NOT. 

claiming  the  fullest  right  to  speak  on  this  points 
—  I  say,  with  the  calmest  and  most  unflinching 
sense  of  responsibility, —  I  say,  standing  here  in 
the  sight  of  God  and  of  my  Saviour,  and  it  may 
be  of  the  angels  and  spirits  of  the  dead  — 
that  not  one  of  those  three  expressions  ought  to 
stand  any  longer  in  our  English  Bibles,  and  that, 
being  —  in  our  present  acceptation  of  them  —  in 
the  notion  (that  is)  which  all  uneducated  persons 
attach  to  them  —  simply  mistranslations •,  they 
most  unquestionably  will  not  stand  unexplained 
in  the  revised  version  of  the  Bible  if  the  revisers 
have  understood  their  duty.  The  verb  "to 
damn  "  in  the  Greek  Testament  is  neither  more 
nor  less  than  the  verb  "  to  condemn,"  and  the 
words  translated  "  damnation "  are  simply  the 
words  which,  in  the  vast  majority  of  instances, 
the  same  translators  have  translated,  and  rightly 
translated,  by  "  judgment"  and  "condemnation." 
The  word  auxmo?,  sometimes  translated,  "ever- 
lasting," is  simply  the  word  which,  in  its  first 
sense,  means  agelong  or  czonian ;  and  which  is  in 
the  Bible  itself  applied  to  things  which  have 
utterly  and  long  since  passed  away ;  and  is  in  its 
second  sense  something  "  spiritual "  —  something 
above  and  beyond  time,  —  as  when  the  knowl- 


"HELL     WHAT    IT    JS    NOT.  59 

edge  of  God  is  said  to  be  eternal  life.  So  that 
when,  with  your  futile  billions,  you  foist  into  this 
world  alwviog  the  fiction  of  endless  time,  you  do 
but  give  the  lie  to  the  mighty  oath  of  that  great 
angel,  who  set  one  foot  upon  the  sea,  and  one 
upon  the  land,  and  with  hand  uplifted  to  Heaven 
sware  by  Him  who  liveth  forever  and  ever  that 
"Time  shall  be  no  more."  And  finally  in  the 
Gospels  and  Epistles  the  word  rendered  "  hell " 
is  in  one  place  the  Greek  "  Tartarus,"  borrowed 
as  a  name  for  the  prison  of  evil  spirits,  not 
after,  but  until,  the  resurrection;  in  five  places 
"  Hades,"  which  simply  means  the  world  beyond 
the  grave ;  and  in  twelve  places  "  Gehenna," 
which  means  primarily  the  Valley  of  Hinnom 
outside  Jerusalem,  in  which,  after  it  had  been 
polluted  by  Moloch-worship,  corpses  were  flung 
and  fires  were  lit ;  and  is  used,  secondarily,  as  a 
metaphor,  not  of  fruitless  and  hopeless,  but  — 
for  all  at  any  rate  but  a  small  and  desperate 
minority  —  of  that  purifying  and  corrective  pun- 
ishment which,  as  all  of  us  alike  believe,  does 
await  impenitents  in  both  here  and  beyond  the 
grave. 

But,   be   it   solemnly   observed,   the    jews    to 
whom  and  in  whose  metaphorical  sense  the  word 


6O  "  HELL  " WHAT    IT    IS    NOT. 

was  used  by  our  blessed  Lord,  never  did,  either 
then,  or  at  any  period,  normally  attach  to  the 
word  "  Gehenna  "  that  meaning  of  endless  torment 
which  we  attach  to  "  hell."  To  them,  and  in 
their  style  of  speech,  —  and  therefore  on  the  lips 
of  our  blessed  Saviour,  who  addressed  it  to  them, 
and  spake  in  terms  which  they  would  understand, 
—  it  meant  not  a  material  and  everlasting  fire,  but 
an  intermediate,  a  remedial,  a  metaphorical,  a 
terminable  retribution. 

7.  Thus,  then,  finding  nothing  in  Scripture  or 
anywhere  to  prove  that  the  fate  of  every  man  is, 
at  death,  irrevocably  determined,  I  shake  off  the 
hideous  incubus  of  atrocious  conceptions — I 
mean  those  conceptions  of  unimaginable  horror 
and  physical  excruciation  endlessly  prolonged  — 
attached  by  popular  ignorance  and  false  theology 
to  the  doctrine  of  future  retribution.  But  neither 
can  I  dogmatise  on  the  other  side.  I  see  noth- 
ing to  prove  the  distinctive  belief  attached  to 
the  word  "  purgatory."  I  cannot  accept  the 
spreading  doctrine  of  Conditional  Immortality ;  I 
cannot  preach  the  certainty  of  Universalism. 
That  last  doctrine  —  the  belief  that 

"  Good  shall  fall 
At  last,  far  off,  at  last  to  all  "  — 


"HELL" — WHAT  IT  is  NOT.          61 

does  indeed  derive  much  support  from  many 
passages  of  Scripture  ;  it  —  or  a  view  more  or 
less  analogous  to  it  —  was  held  by  Origen,  the 
greatest  and  noblest,  by  Gregory  of  Nyssa, 
the  most  fearless,  by  Clemens  of  Alexandria, 
the  most  learned,  by  Gregory  of  Nazianzus,  one 
of  the  most  eloquent,  by  Justin  Martyr,  one  of 
the  earliest  of  the  fathers ;  it  was  spoken  of  in 
some  places  with  half  approval,  or  with  a  rejec- 
tion which  even  when  absolute  was  sympathetic 
and  respectful,  by  theologians  like  St.  Irenaeus, 
St.  Athanasius,  St.  Jerome,  St.  Ambrose,  even 
St.  Augustine  himself;  in  modern  times,  among 
many  others,  it  has  been  held  by  great  and  most 
orthodox  theologians  like  Bengal  and  Tholuck, 
and  by  saints  of  God  like  Erskine  of  Linlathen 
and  Bishop  Ewing  of  Argyll.  And  further,  what- 
ever may  have  been  the  motives  which  influenced 
them,  the  Reformers  struck  out  of  the  prayer- 
book  the  Forty-second  Article,  which  declared 
that  "All  men  shall  not  be  saved."  On  such  a 
question  as  this  I  care  not  for  individual  authority, 
but  this  much  at  least  is  proved  by  the  many 
differing  theories  of  wise  and  holy  men  —  that 
God  has  given  us  no  clear  and  decisive  revela- 
tion on  the  final  condition  of  those  who  have  diecf 


62  "  HELL  "•  -  WHAT    IT    IS    NOT. 

m  sin.  It  is  revealed  to  us  that  "  God  is  love ;  " 
and  that  "  Him  to  know  is  life  eternal ;  "  and  that 
it  is  not  His  will  that  any  should  perish;  and 
that  "  as  in  Adam  all  die,  even  so  in  Christ  shall 
all  be  made  alive ; "  but  how  long,  even  after 
death,  man  may  continue  to  resist  His  will ;  how 
long  he  may  continue  in  that  spiritual  death 
which  is  alienation  from  God ;  that  is  one  of  the 
secret  things  which  God  hath  not  revealed.  But 
this  much,  at  any  rate  —  that  the  fate  of  man  is 
not  finally  and  irreversibly  sealed  at  death,  and 
you  yourselves,  unwittingly  perhaps,  but  none 
the  less  certainly,  admit,  and  declare  and  confess, 
every  time  you  repeat,  in  the  Apostles'  Creed, 
that  Christ  descended  into  hell.  For  the  sole 
passage  which  proves  that  article  of  the  Creed  is 
the  passage  in  St.  Peter,  which  tells  us  that  "  He 
went  and  preached  to  the  Spirits  in  prison,  which 
sometimes  were  disobedient."  St.  Peter  in  my 
text  tells  you  in  so  many  words  that  "  the  Gospel 
was  preached  to  them  that  were  dead,"  and  if,  as 
the  Church  in  every  age  has  held,  the  fate  01 
those  dead  sinners  was  not  irrevocably  fixed  by 
death,  then  it  must  be  clear  and  obvious  to  the 
meanest  understanding  that  neither  of  necessity 
is  ours. 


"  HELL  "-  -  WHAT    IT    IS    NOT.  63 

There  then  is  the  sole  answer  which  I  can 
give  to  your  question,  "  What  about  the  lost  ? " 
My  belief  is  fixed  upon  "  that  living  God  "  who 
we  are  told  is  "  the  Saviour  of  all  men."  My 
answer  is  with  Thomas  Erskine  of  Linlathen, 
that  "  we  are  lost  here  as  much  as  there,  and 
that  Christ  came  to  seek  and  save  the  lost ;  "  and 
my  hope  is  that  the  vast  majority,  at  any  rate,  of 
the  lost,  may  at  length  be  found.  If  any  hardened 
sinner,  shamefully  loving  his  sin,  and  despising 
the  long-suffering  of  his  Saviour,  trifle  with  that 
doctrine,  it  is  at  his  own  just  and  awful  peril. 
But  if,  on  the  other  hand,  there  be  some  among 
you —  as  are  there  not?  —  souls  sinful  indeed, 
yet  not  hard  in  sin ;  souls  that  fail  indeed,  yet 
even,  amid  their  failing,  long,  and  pray,  and  love, 
and  agonise,  and  strive  to  creep  ever  nearer  to  the 
light ;  then  I  say,  have  faith  in  God.  There  is  hope 
for  you ;  hope  for  you,  even  if  death  overtake  you 
Before  the  final  victory  is  won ;  hope  for  the  poor  in 
spirit,  for  theirs  is  the  kingdom  of  Heaven ;  hope 
for  the  mourners,  for  they  shall  be  comforted, 
though  you  too  may  have  to  be  purified  in  that 
Gehenna  of  aeonian  fire  beyond  the  grave.  Yes, 
my  brethren,  "  Say  ye  to  the  righteous,  that  it 
shall  be  well  with  him :  for  they  shall  eat  the 


64  "  HELL  "-  -  WHAT    IT    IS    NOT. 

fruit  of  their  doings.  Woe  unto  the  wicked !  it 
shall  be  ill  with  him  :  for  the  reward  of  his  hands 
shall  be  given  him  ;  "  but  say  also,  as  Christ's  own 
Apostles  said,  that  there  shall  be  a  "  a  restitution 
of  all  things,"  that  God  willeth  not  that  any 
should  perish ;  that  Christ  both  died,  and  rose, 
and  revived  that  He  might  be  Lord  both  of  the 
dead  and  the  living;  that  as  in  Adam  all  die, 
even  so  in  Christ  shall  all  be  made  alive ;  and 
that  the  day  shall  come  when  "  all  things  shall 
be  subdued  unto  Him,  that  God  may  be  all  in 
all" — Ttdvra  w  naaw  —  omnia  in  omnibus — all 
things  in  all  men. 


THE   END. 


OVERDUE. 


TA  UJ/J4 


